End-to-End Tests For WordPress Plugins

End-to-End Tests For WordPress Plugins

Over the holidays in 2022, I refactored a lot of the code for Secret Santa Hat. After seeing hundreds of new groups being created each day, I realized it was no longer a simple pet project. No longer could I just push development code directly to production. The project needed to mature.

So, I added some QA processes to ensure that anything deployed live is functional. This gave me the opportunity to really deep-dive end-to-end(E2E) tests and put them in place. I’ve learned a lot, and I see the huge value this can add to my work as a WordPress developer by adding E2E tests to the plugins I build for clients.

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Contact Form 7 – Custom Validation Messages

WordPress - Contact Form 7 Contextual Validation Error Messages

In this month’s edition of “well-built plugins”, we’re taking a look at Contact Form 7 for WordPress. Specifically, we’ll be customizing validation error messages on the front end. The popular contact form builder plugin is quite easy to extend, so let’s jump right in.

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WordPress 4.9: What’s in it for Developers?

WordPress 4.9. Release For Developers

WordPress has released its 12th update for 2017, and it’s also the second minor version pushed out this year. WordPress 4.9 includes a lot for users. “Tipton” introduces changesets for theme customizations, previewing, and scheduling of theme customizer updates and code editing syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and error checking using CodeMirror. Finally, there’s a new Gallery widget and an “Add Media” button for the venerable text widget.1Days of hard-coding images into the text widget are seemingly over.

As usual with each new release, I look for improvements and additions for developers. Although there isn’t quite as much for developers in this specific version, there are a few key inclusions that I wanted to highlight.

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ACF – Get All Fields In A Field Group

ACF - How To Display All Fields In A Field Group

As a WordPress developer, I create a lot of custom data to give clients the functionality they want. I’ve used every way possible, like posts for a custom post type, post meta, taxonomies, options, custom tables, etc. However, for ease of use and client convenience, I mostly use either WordPress native custom fields or the Advanced Custom Fields PRO plugin. With ACF, the interface is great, and, having used it so much, I can quickly setup any field type very quickly. The most time consuming part of using custom data is when it comes time to integrate into the theme.

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ACF Post Object Add-On Plugin Released!

WordPress ACF "Post Object" Field Type Add-on Plugin Released

As promised, I’m releasing a new plugin for Advanced Custom Fields(ACF) named “ACF Post Object Add-On”. This is a relatively small plugin that appends text data to post titles in the “post object” field type within ACF. The plugin is based on my previous tutorial with a few more bells and whistles to give users more flexibility without having to edit functions.php. (more…)